Commuter Infrastructure - Road and Rail

Our local economy has a fundamental dependence on transport links to London and elsewhere. The Council hasn’t given this serious thought, so we have.

SE Essex is a commuter economy within London’s Green Belt, it is a commuter area because it’s close to London and it’s in the Green Belt because it’s close to London.

One of the original reasons for establishing the Green Belt was to prevent the capital’s commuter infrastructure, and with it it’s economy, from being overwhelmed by population growth at and around the city’s periphery. The idea was, and should remain, that growth happens in the inner parts of London or beyond the Green Belt where the reliance on commuting to London is less and development more sustainable.The maps below show the correlation between Green Belt and the proportion of people working in London.

The London Green Belt: Source, London Green Belt Council https://londongreenbeltcouncil.org.uk/maps/

A massive 23% of the Billericay workforce commute by train to London and a further 9% drive to London using the A127 and other roads. These London jobs are very well paid and disproportionately important to our local economy.Others again, commute to other boroughs or parts of Basildon borough and very few work in Billericay itself. These proportions will become further skewed towards London as people migrating out from London but working in the city will have the best chance of being able to afford the homes.

So before growing Billericay (and the rest of SE Essex) by 25%, the Council should be asking if our road and rail links can adapt to cope.

Spoiler alert: They can’t

RailThe Southend Victoria branch line struggles to cope with existing levels of demand and the National rail demand projections are frightening.Demand on Britain’s railways doubled over the last 20 years and National Rail estimate that peak demand on the Southend Vic branch will grow by more than 50% during the Plan Period.

Worse still, these figures are based on much lower house building figures for SE Essex than are now proposed.

So what can be done to improve this during the life of the Plan?

Firstly, it will not be possible to run more frequent High Peak trains before 2025. There are likely to be a small number of extra trains on the Anglia network after 2025, but they’re likely to be allocated to the main line routes via Chelmsford.

It is not possible to run longer trains. All High Peak trains (save one morning service) are at the maximum 12 carriage length.

There is some potential for improvement though – Anglia are planning to replace their entire train fleet by 2020 as our existing trains will be over 30 years old by then.

These trains will be the same size as existing trains, but they will fit in about 20% more seats, into the new units, mostly through the use of ‘tip-up’ seats in standing areas such as doorways.

Note: Putting the tip-up seats in standing areas is welcome and will increase seated capacity but limit the amount of space people must stand up in and so the overall number of people who can get on the train. Note: Practical experience suggests that many of these tip-up seats won’t be usable at the busiest times as using them would prevent people getting on the train.

So in conclusion, High Peak demand will increase by well over 50% but capacity can only grow by around 20% at best.

And there’s further clouds on the horizon:

Don’t bank on the wholly inadequate Anglia improvements, the new trains, happening on time.

There is a quiet crisis in the UK rail industry with the government awarding franchises based on a system that forces them to bid more they can reliably guarantee to deliver. Abellio is no exception and they recently had to be bailed out by their owner, the Dutch government.They may delay the roll-out of the trains or not run full length trains as we’d been led to expect.

C2C faces just the same kind of challenges as the Southend Victoria branch line so both lines are likely to fail.

When the first of these becomes intolerable it will trigger a rush of passengers switching to the other line causing that line to reach a tipping point too. A possible scenario would be C2C facing excessive demand and so increasing its fares. This would reduce the significant price difference between the two that sees people from Billericay, Wickford and other areas prefer to use the C2C line.

But Crossrail will help won’t it?No. Crossrail has caused a massive and ongoing headache for Southend Line commuters. When it’s operational it’s effect will be negligible. Billericay commuters are no more likely to change at Shenfield and get an all stops slow service to central London than C2C customers are to change at Upminster to get on the District Line. Those wishing to use that line will change at Stratford or Liverpool Street and join Crossrail at one of those locations.

A127The A127 is known as the ‘Arterial’, by naming it after the arteries of a human body its builders clearly understood the importance of the road to the SE Essex economy.

That was in the 1920s, since then London has spread much further east, the large new town of Basildon was created and every other town in the area has grown beyond recognition.

Now this ‘Artery’ is overwhelmed, and at 70,000 movements per day is as busy as some Motorways, furthermore this is expected to grow to more than 100,000 per day during the Plan Period. Yet unlike motorways it has just two lanes in each direction and many junctions that are well past capacity. And unlike Motorways and other major A-roads the A127 attracts no government funding as it was removed from the Trunk road network (the network which is supported by the government) in the 1990s and given to Essex County Council, who can barely afford to maintain it.

It would take billions to widen the road and that looks unlikely to ever happen – even if it were found to be feasible, which is doubtful due to the many homes and other buildings so close to the road. Basildon has some vague aspirations for junctions on the Southend bound route but nothing between Billericay and London.

The sensible approach for Essex County Council to take would be to call for moderated housing targets, but Essex County Council are not sensible.When Castle Point sought to moderate their housing totals, Essex objected on the basis that if Castle Point don’t worsen the local traffic problem there will be a reduced chance of Essex obtaining a special government grant to mitigate the problem by improving the Fairglen junction (the A130\A127).

Then there’s the Thames Crossing proposals – a glance at the map and it will be obvious that any disruption between the new tunnel and the M25 would lead to traffic diverting along the A127\A128 worsening traffic there still further.

Billericay's Local Road NetworkProblemIt would be easy to write many thousands of words on the problems faced by the constricted road network of our historic town.

In 2012 an Essex County Council study considered the impact of several housing growth on 9 key Billericay junctions. They found that even if no houses were build, the background growth in traffic would see these junctions pushed over capacity by 2031 (or before). Billericay was very much the weak link in the boroughs road network.

They found that the problem was worse if 800 homes were built and worse again if 1500 were built – none of these scenarios considered the impact of the huge levels of growth expected outside Basildon Borough.

Now of course we face the prospect of 2,800 homes, nearly all on Green Belt.ResponseThe worst effected junctions were Sun Corner and the London Road\Tye Common Road junction so efforts to find solutions to junction capacity issues have focussed on these.The idea of the ‘Relief Road’ is that it will enable traffic on the Basildon-Brentwood through traffic to by-pass these junctions and so relieve them.But how much of Billericay’s traffic is through traffic from Basildon to Brentwood, instead of:

N-S, E-W and other cross-town through-traffic (people who don’t live or work in Billericay)

People coming into Billericay to drop someone off then heading back the way they came (School drops etc)

Point to point traffic within Billericay

As far as we can tell there has been no analysis of what difference can be reasonably achieved by this road and what the unintended consequences might be.Leaving aside the appalling environmental damage, there are a number of problems with the Relief Road:

The developer contributions that will go towards the road would otherwise be spent on socially useful projects.

At least 1700 (probably more like 2100) houses are now planned for the south-west alone, the number has increased so that there are enough developer contributions to pay for the road. These houses will generate a great deal of traffic and pollution themselves.

Tye Common Lane is already very busy at peak times. This road will be severed by a new junction (see proposed junction below) with the link road worsening tailbacks.

The road will redistribute existing and new traffic around Billericay in unpredictable ways, it seems likely that a great deal of traffic will be diverted to south-west and west Billericay with the Mountnessing Road – Perry Street route particularly badly affected.

The road will by a partial by-pass but will not be built to by-pass standards. It will instead be a rat-run through a series of new housing estates. The availability of a new through-route across town may mean more traffic uses the A129 through Billericay as a through-route.

Intolerable impact on Frithwood Lane includes factor that new and existing residents of the will have access to town severed by a very busy road.

All sorts of rat-running options created in order for traffic to access new road

We are preparing a much fuller response for the Government Planning Inspector, but our conclusion is that calling it a ‘Relief Road’ does not make it one, the term is a misnomer.

Do you trust the Council’s judgement? - The Norsey Road One-way shambles

Do you trust the judgement of Essex CC, Basildon Council and the other bodies? Can they be trusted to get this right?

Do you remember the disastrous 2005 scheme which closed Norsey Road and caused huge tailbacks and pollution in Billericay?